The Climbers

“It’s of no use, and what’s more, I don’t believe it’s right,” said Mr. Jeffries, “this filling every boy’s head with thoughts of rising in the world. It looks all very well in books; but is quite a different thing in reality. I tell you what, it’s doing a mighty deal of damage in the world. Why, it’s almost impossible for anybody that wants help to get any of the right sort. Once find a boy that has any grit in him, and he’s off as soon as he can scrape up enough money to go to school with. There’s that stable-boy of mine, as good a little fellow as I’d ever care to have; but in the room of playing like other boys, when he has a moment’s leisure, he’s off to the barn with a book in his hand. I’ve told him many a time ’twould be the ruin of him; but he seems to take to it as naturally as a duck does to water;” and the little hotel-keeper looked around complacently.

“I thought that was the very spirit that was commendable in this country, Mr. Jeffries,” said I, turning my gaze from the mountain towering above us to the face of my host. “Hope is the grand incentive to the American boy, the hope of knowing more, and doing better for himself and others, than his father and grandfather did before him. Look around you and see who are the men of the present; ten to one they are poor men’s sons. They felt that they could do something, and they accomplished it.”

“It looks all fair, I allow; but the thing is carried too far; it makes them discontented and unsteady, changing from one thing to another. In my opinion, if you want to make any thing in the world, you must stick to one thing. It is an old saying, ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss.’”

“True; but may not these poor boys have a higher aim and purpose, and carry it out quite as effectually as if it required no changes? Your stable-boy may have mapped out, vaguely perhaps, his future, and to reach it must make use of such stepping-stones as come within his reach. He does his work well, does he not?”

“Oh, there’s nothing to say against him, only I don’t like to see him always reading; he can’t go by a newspaper—and my wife keeps them hung up by the side of the roller—without stopping for a bit, catching as a hungry horse does at a spear of grass or hay that comes within his reach. I give him pretty good wages for a boy, and the women folks patch up his clothes and see that he has plenty to eat. It seems to me that he ought to be contented and happy, with jests and frolic like the rest, in the room of being shut up with his book. And then, to cap all, I went into the barn the other day, and there he was perched up on the haymow, talking away and making gestures just as the parson does. I could not keep from laughing, and he came down and skulked away looking sheepish enough.”